Fortified by the inspiring example of Mr. Upton Sinclair, who recently picketed the offices of the Standard Oil Company in New York with a view to bringing pressure to bear on Mr. John Rockefeller, Junr., Mr. Alf. Abel, the famous Manx novelist, has adopted similar measures to bring Mr. Andrew Carnegie to reason. The trouble is of long standing and has grown out of the movement inaugurated by Mr. Abel to induce municipalities and local authorities to refuse the gifts of Free Libraries. Such benefactions, as Mr. Abel has most conclusively shown, while nominally intended to educate the masses, in reality have the result of restricting the sale and circulation of those works of fiction which conduce most effectively to the culture, the intellectual emancipation and the moral uplift of the nation. Worse still, they reduce the legitimate emoluments which the authors of these noble works derive from their beneficent labours. Owing to this pernicious system the number of copies sold of Mr. Abel's last work only readied 250,000 copies, instead of 400,000, as he and his publisher, Mr. Goethemann, confidently expected. Mr. Abel has memorialised the Prime Minister, but without effect, and at last determined to take decisive action himself. Accordingly, having chartered a swift steamer manned by Manx fishermen, and carrying 500 volunteers wearing the national uniform, Mr. Abel set out from Douglas (I. of M.) on Wednesday last and, landing in the neighbourhood of Dornoch on Friday night, advanced early next morning on Skibo Castle, the seat of Mr. Carnegie. The famous millionaire, who is an early riser, was playing the organ in the central hall of the Castle when he was apprised of the approach of the raiders by one of his retinue, and at once determined to organise a stubborn resistance. The portcullis was let down, the moat filled to its utmost capacity, while Winchester rifles were served out to the four butlers, sixteen footmen, seven chauffeurs and twenty-four gardeners who compose the staff. The organist was instructed to play martial music to hearten the defenders, while Mr. Carnegie took up his position in the bomb-proof gazebo which is so prominent a feature in the Sutherland landscape. Meantime Mr. Abel, advancing at the head of his volunteers, had taken cover behind an Araucaria and addressed an ultimatum to Mr. Carnegie through a megaphone. It was to the effect that unless he promised to forbid the supply of Mr. Abel's novels to his Free Libraries, Mr. Abel would-- (1) Let loose 1,000 Manx cats in Mr. Carnegie's preserves; (2) Permanently establish himself in the neighbourhood of Skibo and follow Mr. Carnegie about wherever he went, in Elizabethan costume; (3) Make Mr. Carnegie the villain of his next novel; (4) Give free recitations from his works in Dornoch and the neighbourhood.